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A Seminole man was sentenced to a term of 60 years in prison Thursday after accepting a plea bargain agreement in the 106th Judicial District Court. Heinrich Franz Peters, 39, of Seminole was arrested on February 14th of this year for Driving While Intoxicated, enhanced to a felony for having three or more prior convictions for the same offense. Assistant District Attorney Sammy McCreary presented to the Court that Peters had been previously convicted for DWI four times (1988, 1990, 1992, and 1996) in Gaines County, twice in Dawson County (1989, 1990) and twice in Lubbock County (1993, 1996). Peters had already served 6 years of a 20 year sentence for his 1996 DWI convictions. A warrant for a parole violation was issued shortly after his February arrest.

According to the report, Peters was arrested by Officer Kris Harmon of the Lamesa Police Department shortly after midnight on February 14th. The report stated that Peters had been traveling west bound in the 1000 Block of North 4th Street when he ran a red light at a high rate of speed, nearly causing a collision. Officer Harmon stated in his report that he found Peters to have a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from his breath and person, and had to use his truck for support to keep from falling down. Peters refused all sobriety tests and also refused breath and blood tests.

During the sentencing phase, District Judge Carter Scheldnik, ruled that Peters sentence on this charge would not begin until the remaining 14 years of his previous sentence had been served. By state law, Peters must serve a minimum 2/3rds (40 years) of this sentence before becoming eligible for parole.

Two others agreeing to plea bargain agreements were Devin Wayne Matlock, 19 years of age, and Juan Carlos Estrata, 22 years of age. Matlock was sentenced to 10 years felony probation on charges of Burglary of a Building. He was also ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution to the business owner, $1,000 in fines, serve 200 hours of community service, and $964.00 in court costs. Estrata was sentenced to five years felony probation on charges of deadly conduct and child endangerment. On top of the five years probation he was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine, 100 hours of community service, and pay $875.00 in court costs.

A burglary of a habitation at 1006 N. 11th Street was reported to the Lamesa Police Department on Tuesday. Officer Kristopher Harmon responded to the scene of the burglary at about 7:10 AM. According to Officer Harmon's report, a small television set, a CD collection, and a DVD player were taken from the residence.

According to Lamesa Police Detective Alex Contreras the burglary suspect was quickly identified and an ensuing arrest warrant was served late Tuesday afternoon. According to Lt. Contreras the suspect in the case used his drivers license to "jimmy" the door and in doing so broke his license in half leaving all of his identifying information behind at the scene. The name of the suspect, a 16 year of age juvenile, was being held at a juvenile detention facility in Midland.

I know it probably doesn't interest anyone, but I have another "collection" that I have built over the ten years since I've been in Law Enforcement. I collect Police Patches. To date I have a little over 600 Police Patches including patches from the RCMP, cities and towns from all 50 States, as well as patches from Spain, Australia, Germany, France, Scotland, and England. Believe it or not this collection takes up more space than my card collection.

I've had 8 hours sleep in the last 48 hours.....three tuesday night and five wednesday night....and now that it is 4:18AM on Friday Morning, in another 12 minutes I will have been up for almost 24 straight!!!!! If anyone is ever interested in experimenting.....try a little sleep deprivation.....i've learned over the last few hours that I hallucinate when I've been up this long with this little sleep!!!! I can remember in my college days and the second and third year of my first marriage...lack of sleep had little to no effect on me at all. In college I had a full time job and a 12 to 15 hour per semester class load....the second and third year of my first marriage I worked 80 to 100 hours a week just to get away from the wife!!!!! I'm 33 now...and while I'm a long way from being OLD.....not sleeping for 24 hours has a different effect on me than it did when I was in my early 20's!!!!!!!!!

Back in January of this year I was dispatched to a call about two block from my house in reference to a possible drowning. When I got there I found out that a 16 month old child had been left in a bathtub unattended by the mother for an extended period of time and as a result, the child slipped under the water and drowned. The EMS workers and Doctors did everything they could but Ethan Nathaniel Rocha died at the age of 16 monts and 21 days old. The details on the mother is that she left the child unattended in the bathtub for almost 40 minutes while she was on the phone with her boyfriend, which to me was a very clear cut case of negligence on her part, and I filed a case against her for Criminally Negligent Homicide.

About two weeks after that I was called to the District Attorney's Office and met with the DA himself, not one of the assistants, and he told me that they were not going to seek prosecution of the case because the childs mother had "suffered enough" with the loss of her child. I had a melt down of nuclear proportions in the DA's office, to the point that I had to be escorted out. I filed a complaint with the State Attorney Generals Office and they reviewed the case and all of the sudden our DA has a change of heart and is now vigorously pursuing the case, and to read his comments in the paper, he's making it sound like the prosecution was all his idea, and of course he has said nothing about the Attorney General Review on the case.

The mother was indicted by the grand jury last week, and I think the only satisfaction I'm going to get out of the case is, after chasing her all day Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday, I finally caught up with her 15 minutes before I was set to go home and I arrested her on an Indictment Warrant for Injury to a Child, Manslaughter, and Criminally Negligent Homicide, with a pre-set bond of $100,000. I also found out that she is pregnant again......I hope this one stands a better chance than Ethan did.

Not only is it baseball season, but the weather is finally starting to be hot. I know this sounds crazy, but I like it when it's busy at work, and when the heat goes up, our call load goes right along with it. Not to mention the fact that I'm a storm chaser on my days off....and living at the southern end of "tornado" alley gives me plenty of storms to chase. We've already had two storms in the last week that had rotation in them, but so far, nothing had touched down. I go out and photograph lightning and if I can ever find the disc with all my lightning pics on it I'll post a few. It's amazing the power a good thunderstorm has.

I made an entry in the main forum about early blog adopters in reference to the F-5 tornado in Jarrell TX. This is a link to some photos of damage done my that tornado. I have also posted links to several other of my favorite sites.

Andy Taylor, a 28 year old Deputy with the Llano County Sheriffs Department (Texas) was shot in the head on Sunday, May 9th, after stopping a vehicle on a routine traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle, Eric R. Wolfe, of Kingsland TX., is currently on parole for robbery out of another State. Wolfe, a participant in a work program that provides job opportunities for parollees, was found approximately 11 hours later in a wooded state park with a self inflicted gun shot wound to the abdomen. Wolfe is expected to live.

From the details that I have been able to receive, Taylor had stopped Wolfe for a minor traffic violation, ran a check on his license, and was going back to Wolfe's vehicle to return his license and release him with a warning for the violation. When Taylor got close to Wolfe's vehicle, Wolfe fired a single round from a small caliber handgun, striking Taylor in the forehead. Taylor at about 3:00pm on Monday afternoon, shortly after being removed from Life Support.

The suspect, Wolfe, had been parolled less than two months ago after serving less than 1/3 of a 12 year sentence for Robbery in Oklahoma. Wolfe's release was the result of an early release program to ease prison over crowding.

Needless to say, with me being a police officer, stories like this make my blood run cold. We have minimum security inmates serving more time for "white collar" and petty crimes than violent offenders and child predators. It makes more sense to me, if we are in a position that we have to participate in an early release program, then release the minimum security inmates and leave the robbers, murderers, and sex offenders locked up.

Steroids in baseball is the current "hot topic." My opinion on this is pretty simple. The guys who have set records while on steroids is a done deal. The records are set in stone and I don't think there should be another * fiasco like there was when Marris set the HR record in 1961. If that was going to be the case, how many records were set by someone who was on steroids, how do we know if they were on steroids at the time the record was set, and exactly how much thicker will the baseball records book have to be in order to add all of those asterisks to it.

When it comes to punishment for baseball players who test positive for steroids it's simple. First offense, 81 game suspension (1/2 season) and for the second offense put him on the life time ban list with Pete Rose. It is my opinion, that anyone who has ever tested positive for steroid use, or has ever admitted to the use of a banned substance should never become eligible for the Hall of Fame, no matter what their accomplishment. If Rose betting on baseball warrants a life time ban from baseball and the Hall of Fame, surely "doping" deserves the same ban. I, personally, am of the opinion that Rose does not deserve a life time ban......what he did was wrong, and removing him from the game was enough punishment....but his betting had nothing to do with the Hall of Fame worthy stats he put up on the field. Keep him out of baseball if you want....but his accomplishments on the field surely warrant induction to the Hall.

What is the deal with youths involved in sports today. I'm not sure if it's the computer generation just being lazy or what, but I went to a little league baseball game over the weekend and it seems that the quality of skill possessed by kids involved in sports is on the rapid decline. I watched two games in the 12 to 13 year old age division and out of the four teams I watched there was MAYBE two quality ball players in the group.

I've noticed this in all youth sports, to include highschool football. There are maybe one or two quality kids on a team and as for the rest, you might as well suit up the cheer leaders and put them on the field.

Is this just the trend in this area, or is there an actual lack of atheletic skill brought on by either the computer/video game era, or is this lack of skill because of parent child relationships and the lack of fathers taking their kids out and teaching them the basics of whatever game they choose to play????